Michael Pilgrim reviews Tales of Television Centre, the one-off documentary
about the history of the BBC's Television Centre building in west London.

Tales of Television Centre (BBC Four) was a leaving do for a building. For the assembled actors, presenters, Doctor Who assistants and Pan’s Persons, it was a time for nostalgia.

The doughnut-shaped BBC complex in west London is being closed and sold after more than 50 years educating and informing. Salford and austerity beckon. No more japes, like the time Brian Blessed shinnied up the statue of Helios in the central circle and fixed a condom to its privates. No more calculator-busting expenses tabs in the bars and restaurants of nearby Holland Park.

Just as well. Taxpayer-funded broadcasting has enjoyed a sunny half century. Recession and competition have scarcely rattled the cups at what appears to have been one long BBC tea party. Indeed, if Tales of Television Centre is anything to go by, more than lapsang souchong was imbibed.

BBC veteran Johnny Ball described an episode of Play School where a performance of the Nativity was enlivened by two of the shepherds having been at the ganja. Fortunately, the scene was shot in silhouette so Play School’s impressionable audience knew no better, apart from a misplaced crook. Ball didn’t indulge.

The documentary was a self-regarding wake for an era when paisley cravats were tolerated, Noel Edmonds was admired and bad behaviour reigned in the labyrinthine corridors of the state fun factory.

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Much of what went on, however, appeared at odds with the modern BBC ethos. Class distinctions were part of Television Centre’s architecture: separate entrances for crews and producers; waitress service on the balcony for executives, baked beans for the proles below. Stern-faced commissionaires and beehive-haired receptionists policed the entrances with unyielding efficiency.

Some programmes, Blue Peter included, were relegated to a tower block on the outskirts of the site. It was at this point that we were reminded of one of the saddest episodes in BBC history: the desecration of the Blue Peter garden, an act of vandalism akin to the axing of Routemaster buses.

The programme was delivered in the talking-head style favoured by directors of nostalgia TV, whereby commentators are intercut with old clips – a format at its wallpaper-stripping worst when arthritic youth spokesmen look back at vintage telly or pop and are obliged to pretend they were children in, say, 1994.

The star, though, was Television Centre itself, described by Jools Holland as a cross between showbusiness and a KGB interrogation centre. Comedians used it as an exterior location, it being free and accessible. Michael Bentine, the former Goon, was one of the worse offenders for filming in the grounds. So much so that when robbers raided TV Centre, exiting in their Jag, the commissionaire waved them through, remarking: “Nice to see you, Mr Bentine.”